


all the world surrounds me, and my feet are on the ground

by distortionist



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Bisexual Character, Gen, Non-binary character, Post-Canon, Sole Survivor Jess, implied PTSD, well. the bi part is kinda only briefly implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:20:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23775982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distortionist/pseuds/distortionist
Summary: the world is still turning, and jess is not truly alone.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	all the world surrounds me, and my feet are on the ground

**Author's Note:**

> UM!! im honestly not sure where i was going with this, but i rlly wanted to think abt nb jess and somehow it also turned into sole survivor jess
> 
> no one even likes until dawn other than me at this point but u know what? i'm posting this anyways because im sexy like that

jessica is finally alone in the cabin with mike.

she is finally alone in the cabin with mike, and she wants to cry. she has no idea why, but the tears are threatening to spill from her eyes, and she isn’t sure how to stop them. 

there are so many things running through her mind, and she can’t seem to organize her thoughts. 

hannah and beth are still missing. her clothes are soaking wet. when she saw ashley at the lodge, her heart skipped a beat. on her way to the mountain, with her braids hidden by her hat and layers upon layers of coats hiding her body, a young boy had called her “sir.” she wishes someone would call her that again. she doesn’t understand that thought. she misses hannah and beth. she thinks that josh has been acting strange this entire time. she doesn’t want mike to touch her. 

jessica is finally alone in the cabin with mike, and she is afraid.

mike asks her what’s wrong. before she can respond, there’s a crash in the other room. everything past that point is a messy, terrifying blur in her mind. she goes outside and screams. when she closes the door behind herself, there are hands on her body that drag her through the glass window.

she remembers hearing mike scream. she remembers gunshots. she remembers the feeling of her body being dragged through the snow. she remembers the horrible, dusty smells of the mines. she remembers the impact of the elevator falling. 

she remembers waking up cold and alone and terrified. she remembers finding her way back to the lodge only to find it burning down with what remained of her friends inside. 

when she asks what happened to her friends, the investigators say she’s better off not knowing. when she thinks about the claws of whatever dragged her into the mines and the scent of burning bodies, she realizes that she doesn’t want to know anyways. 

jessica is alone once again, but this time she is truly alone. she is afraid again, but this time she is truly terrified down to very core of her being.

she is alone in her apartment, wearing the same clothes she’s been wearing for the past two weeks. she has only left her bed when absolutely necessary. every few hours, she walks over to her window to make sure it’s still locked. sometimes she considers putting her bookshelf in front of it, but after weeks of not eating or sleeping properly, she doesn’t have the strength. 

jessica gets texts from her parents every few days. she has not responded to a single one of them. they haven’t bothered coming to her apartment to check on her. deep down, that infuriates her and makes her feel even lonelier than she already is. but she doesn’t have the energy to feel truly angry. 

deep down, she wants to smash the framed photo of herself and all her friends that rests on her nightstand. she wants to take a hammer to the vase matt bought her when she first moved into her own apartment. she wants to tear apart every photo of her friends she has. she wants to smash mike’s old guitar over her knee. she wants to throw away every article of clothing emily had ever let her borrow. she wants to destroy every piece she has left of her friends and set it ablaze so it can die with them. 

but she doesn’t, because most days she cannot bring herself to even leave her bed. it’s cold and lonely and the sheets haven’t been washed in weeks, but she has nowhere else to go. 

when a month has passed, jessica decides that enough is enough. she puts on one of mike’s old baseball caps to hide her knotted hair and tired eyes, and grabs the box of old photos she’d been hiding under her bed. she leaves the house for the first time in a month, and she throws the box of photos into the dumpster behind the house. 

the next day, jessica takes a shower and finally tries to brush out her hair. her comb snaps in half, and her brush loses most of its bristles. not a single knot has come out. 

the day after that, jessica leaves the house again. she goes to a walk-in salon, and she tells the stylist to cut all her hair off. she is left with a pixie cut that just barely makes it down to her chin. without the weight of her long locks, she almost feels freer. 

afterwards, she goes to get coffee. when the barista calls out her name, it feels wrong. she hasn’t heard another person say her name in weeks. hearing it again leaves her with a heavy feeling in her chest. she decides that from then on, she would only go by ‘jess.’

as she leaves the store, she bumps into someone. when they go to apologize, they spend a few moments trying to figure out whether to call jess “ma’am” or “sir.” jess doesn’t wait to figure out what they call her, because for some reason, the idea of possibly being called “ma’am” again makes her sick to her stomach. she isn’t sure what that means.

from then on, jess only wears loose hoodies when she goes out, and forgoes wearing any makeup. she wears mike’s old baseball cap, and pretends that she is not a girl. whether she is pretending to be a boy or simply nothing at all does not matter to her. when she is not a girl, she feels happier than she has felt in weeks.

the deaths of her friends still weigh on her, but the weight is easier to bear without the weight of being seen as something that feels so wrong to her.

when jess goes to get coffee again, the barista does not call her “ma’am” or “sir”. when jess says she ordered her drink iced, not hot, the barista apologizes and calls out to his coworker, “hey, they wanted this iced.”

after that, jess realizes that they have not been pretending at all this entire time. they are not a girl. they are not a boy, either. they are simply jess. 

when they get home, they dig the box of photos out of the dumpster and bring it back inside. they take the photos out and put them up around their apartment. a photo of matt and josh at the beach is put on the door of the fridge. a polaroid of ashley, emily, and mike is taped to the wall by jess’s bed, along with a photo of hannah, beth, chris, and matt. they put a photo of the ten of them altogether inside a frame, and place it on the coffee table. they learn how to play mike’s old guitar, and they keep the clothes they borrowed from emily neatly hung up in their own section of the closet. 

there is no way to bring back jess’s friends. there is no way to undo the tragedies that had occurred. but if jess could at least let their memories continue to live on in peace, then they would do everything they could to make that happen.

jess is alone, but they are no longer afraid. they are beginning to understand their own feelings, and they are no longer at war with the ghosts of their friends. and jess knows, deep down, that the path they’re beginning to walk isn’t alone. with every step taken, jess can hear the echoes of their friends’ footsteps beside them. 

the world is still turning, and jess is not truly alone.


End file.
